Yes, certainly.
I think that abstraction isn't a yes-or-no question; it's a matter of
degree: *how* abstract is some way of thinking about something?
And the point that (I think) Bill wanted to make in the first place
is also true: You can assimilate an abstraction to the point where
it *feels* concrete to you.
Both deliberate abstraction and expanding the range of concreteness
are skills worth developing, I'd say.
Here's another way to think about it: "abstract" and "familiar"
aren't opposites at all. For instance I'm always telling my
students about the computer science abstraction levels:
application program
high level programming language
low level programming language
machine language
architecture
circuitry
transistors
quantum physics
The top of the chart is the most abstract, but it's also the
area I know best; the bottom half is all a mystery to me even
though it's more concrete.
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